10.20.2016

The thing is Donald had a few very good points that he could have used to his advantage in the presidential race but he couldn't get past his own massive ego or the fact that he'd have had to stick to a non-partisan, populist, logic to carry through with them.

For instance today, the day after the last debate, with just a few weeks to go before election day, Donald is being hung out to dry by almost everyone of every political stripe because of his 'rigged election' argument. Months ago, before i got sick and had to shut down The Mud Report for nearly 6 months, i predicted that Donald would start hollering that the election is rigged to defeat him and he is. BUT i figured he'd carry on with the righteous class war logic that had played so well in the primary season - that the villain was and is the elites. But he didn't and doesn't, instead of talking about the hacking vulnerability of the voting machines that 80% of the votes on Nov. 8th will be cast on. instead of quoting the programmers or telling the people to just do a Google Search of 'rigged voting machines' he rambles on about a few dead people voting, about watching the polling stations for folks that vote twice, about illegal aliens voting, basically about statistically insignificant crap.

Even if all of Donald's examples were to be real they would add up to a few hundred or a few thousand [at most] votes scattered though the millions that will be cast. It's ridiculous. Why he didn't use the valid rigged voting machine argument or recommend a well known and reliable journalistic source like Greg Palast who has built much of his career with his laser-like focus on how millions of minority voters have been disenfranchised? The only answer, other than that he and his team are just to ill-informed to know about all this, is that in each and every situation it's the Republicans doing, or attempting to do, the rigging and Trump didn't want to alienate any more of them than he already had.

Trump was in an excellent position to split off many of Bernie Sanders young voters with anti free trade positions that were nearly identical to Bernie's, an issue so large and so important that Trump could have and should have featured it in every ad and speech he gave, an issue that could have broken the death grip of the corporate and banking elites on the political and economic structure of the US, but Donald let it slip by. Why? Was it because he and his Republican Party are the elites? Well so are the Democrats and Hillary managed to side-step her obvious connections to them.

It's the same with issue after issue, Donald refused to take the populist position and his support never grew past those who supported him in the primaries. The Democratic gatekeepers used the superdelegates they'd built into their nomination system to keep an outsider like Bernie Sanders from winning. The Republicans tried to stop Trump but had no real bulwark to stop him so he got the nomination mostly by fluke. There were so many candidates that Trump won state after state with a small minority. Finally Trump was unstoppable even though the Republican brass tried to stop him.

The thing that sunk Trump wasn't his predatory behaviour toward women - as disgusting as it is, it wasn't his prejudice against Muslims or Mexicans - as stupid as that is, it wasn't his absolute ignorance on world affairs - as glaringly obvious as that is, the problem turned out to be that Trump is such a crude, self-centered asshole that he's now going to go down in a historic shit-kicking that will, i predict, take down the Republican underticket nominees not just federally, where they'll lose both the Senate and House but in state governments too. Trump's stupidity or narcissism or ? could create the kind of explosion in Washington that i'd hoped for months ago even though he loses.

5.06.2016

Everyday it becomes more apparent that the Republican neoconservatives and their ilk are going to be supporting Hillary Clinton in the November elections. Yesterday's announcement by House Speaker Paul Ryan that he doesn't support Donald Trump is just another example of that as is the Republican Party brass's Dump Trump movement led by Mitt Romney and others. Today's article 'Trump as Unifier: Are Hillary Clinton and Neoconservatives Ready to Join Forces? says, "Neocon elites are probably the likeliest faction to defect to Clinton...few would argue that among the three candidates of the two major parties left standing, Clinton remains the one "true hawk. And, as a nascent body of evidence suggests, the members of the pro-war and military establishment know it."

IMO, the elites of America can't allow a Donald vs.Bernie contest as it would mean both sides [Dem/Rep] would be out if their control on free trade deals, citizen's untied and campaign finance reform, the war machine, Wall St bailouts, a potential deal with Russia, and the closure of Gitmo and other issues like 911 and torture. IMO, the elites, though well on their way, have not yet consolidated power completely and only a Clinton victory in November allows them to achieve that goal.

This unlikely situation results from the fact that the Democratic Party's voting process involving super delegates will guarantee a Clinton win and stop any chance of a Trump vs. Sanders contest, whereas the less controlled Republican process allowed Trump to win despite the Republican party's attempts to stop him. Consequently having Clinton in and Bernie, despite popular opinion, out now allows the elites to control the corporate owned and secretive electronic voting machines and guarantee that Clinton wins the election regardless.

Rigged voting machines is not a conspiracy theory as the corporate owned mainstream media will continue to trumpet endlessly. There many excellent, reliable sources whose work can be read and facts researched online. For instance, this excellent Democracy Now interview with author Harvey Wasserman who says in response to the question: Could the 2016 Election Be Stolen with Help from Electronic Voting Machines? that "that 80 percent of the 2016 votes will be cast on electronic voting machines, and we have no way of verifying their accuracy." Adding, "When you go to a bank, don’t you want the option to get a receipt of your transaction? Surely, this would be a simple and effective method for checking voting machines and confirming that your vote was registered for the correct selection. It is such a simple solution that you would think that anyone who opposes it is protecting the right to rig elections."

And here is the video of a computer programmer testifying that he was hired to rig the vote count in an election in Florida. As this man asserts, there are two ways to avoid this type of voter fraud: have a paper trail and access to the source code. Both are denied to the American public.

Another well known and reliable source is Greg Palast who has built much of his career with his laser-like focus on how mostly Republican officials have labored hard to disenfranchise millions of minority voters. He has written such books as Billionaires and Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. If you are not familiar with Palast, I highly encourage you to check out his writing with The Guardian or on his website.

As Joe Stalin said, “Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.”

The Democratic Party Machine is already saying they expect many crossovers from disenchanted traditional Republican supporters, And that may be true but in the opinion of many, including me, millions of Bernie's supporters will not back Hillary either. Some will stay home, but many who see the trade boondoggles, Wall St, and Big Oil's influence and the war machine as their top priority will be voting for Donald in November. This will be increasingly obvious to pollsters leading up to the election and in exit polls on election day.

If this scenario unfolds as i suspect, Donald, as he has shown he'll do [perhaps starting pre-election], will start hollering that the election is rigged to defeat him by the elites which could see millions of well armed Americans in the streets and the declaration martial law. These are dangerous times and on top of the global problems facing us all we face the fact that America's voting system is quite possibly rigged to guarantee the victory of the only corporate war machine candidate left standing - Hillary Clinton.

It's an excellent article except that the solutions offered are all top down when, in reality, every exchange is driven by bottom up demand. Capitalism is an externalizing machine as Joel Bakan's movie and book - 'The Corporation' - teaches us.

The externalizing structure destroying the environment can not and will not change on its own because all of the incentives for people who see more short term money as wealth, instead of long term environmental quality, lie in avoiding costs.

The article asks: "Why should we expect companies to change if neither consumers or governments are forcing them?" Governments can't change the system because they are totally captured by it as is the mainstream media and advertisers.

Of course there could be a revolutionary political change that would dump capitalism or a collapse of either this economic travesty or the environment itself. All of these solutions would create devastating effects on not only the over-consumers but everyone else. BUT there is another way, a bottom up way, that's a revolutionary change of mindset among the consumer class - living simply.

IMO the only viable path forward is for humans to change from wants based consumers to needs based, empathetic, beings. Only by wanting less needless crap can the environment be saved and the quality of life be increased for all of us and our cousins - every living thing we share the planet with - now and in the future.

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This topic echos the basic themes of wanting less, living simply, consuming less needless crap and the paths we all can follow to another way of being and living in the world that allows a viable eco-sphere for our kids, grandkids and the flora, fauna, microbes, minerals forces and faeries we share fair our lives with into the future. Below are a few examples from past Mud Reports, there are many more...please type a keywords into the Search Box to find more on any topic.
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3.23.2016

Like most other folks that have lived many decades beside beautiful Howe Sound i was appalled by the hypocrisy of the new Trudeau governments' announcement that they had decided to approve the Woodfibre LNG project, saying that the proposal is "not likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects." This despite the fact that the science for the project was entirely provided by the proponent, and the public had no opportunity to cross-examine it.

As My Sea to Sky, a citizens' group opposed to the new development, says, "This decision by the federal department, Environment and Climate Change Canada amounted its approval to a broken election promise given the Liberal government's commitment to a low-carbon future many times including at COPE 21 in Paris. Trudeau, or Prime Minister selfie as he's widely known, seems very adept at dodging some promises and outright ignoring others that he made so 'liberally' during last year's election campaign.

Another promise related to this terrible decision is the promise to consult local residents and aboriginal leaders almost all of whom oppose this boondoggle by the sea. The facts are clear, BC's LNG dream is a nightmare of lies and political pandering to the fossil fuel industry. The real facts behind Christy Clark's rosy claims that the Woodfibre Proposal are based on are well documented The article 'Four More Whoppers about LNG in British Columbia', by Andrew Nikiforuk, being the best of the recent ones.

Another promise PM selfie and his Environment Minister made was that upstream emissions would be included in the review process. Yet the governments were warned about LNG greenhouse gas emissions in internal briefing notes that single out methane as well as emissions from fracking process. On top of emissions from combustion and flaring of natural gas, which amounted to 2.4 million tonnes of CO2 [equal to 2/3 of all the autos in the province] is the methane escaping from multiple parts of the fracking process. The amount of lost 'fugitive emissions' by BC govt. estimates, which the federal govt. accepts, are between 0.3 and three per cent whereas other North American jurisdictions and scientific literature estimate that rate is between seven and eight per cent.

Entirely lacking in B.C.’s approach, however, are so-called top-down measurement approaches that the Environmental Defense Fund [EDF] researchers have used in the United States. These techniques measure the methane concentrations in the atmosphere around gas industry operations, using sensors mounted on towers as well as on ground and airborne vehicles. BC uses voluntary industry reporting and financial accounting to generate its fanciful figures.

According to a DeSmog report: "Methane emissions from British Columbia's natural gas industry are likely at least 7 times greater than official numbers blowing BC's Climate Action Plan out of the water. Natural gas is nearly all methane and since methane is such a powerful climate warming gas these unreported emissions mean the total CO2 equivalent emissions for the entire province are nearly 25% higher than is being reported.

This is the Trudeau government's first big decision regarding its climate commitments and it's clear he has chosen to throw the environment under the bus in favor of creating a new fossil fuel exporting industry. It will create a few short term construction jobs and a very few permanent jobs but it will make the already rich corporate owners and their shareholders a bit richer - apparently the goal of all our captured governments these days. Richer that is if they ever figure out where to sell their LNG which will cost 2-3 times the Asian market price IF everything goes perfectly for the corporate criminals and their government ass-kissers.

What emissions and financial accounting never attempt to touch are the long term externalized costs of fracking outside the realm of standard accounting. Upstream wise, we know now that fracking despoils the groundwater as well as destroying massive amounts of irreplaceable fresh water. Fracking not only generates fugitive emissions around the drill sites but creates fissures that allow methane and CO2 to escape from other, often abandoned well sites. Fracking creates earthquakes, consumes and poisons water, pollutes the air and in so doing is a huge contributor to the greenhouse gas problem. The pipelines needed to carry the gas to Squamish destroy carbon sequestering forests and water resources including the habitat of fish and millions of other forms of life. The building of the compressing and shipping facility has a huge carbon footprint. The ships carrying the LNG must be built and fuel must be burned moving the stuff.

If that's not enough, just imagine what happens to every living thing for many kilometers around if one of the ships or the facility explodes.

How can anybody like Catherine McKenna and PM selfie say with a straight face that the Woodfibre LNG proposal is "not likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects." They can't, they know better, they have advisers, they themselves can read, the only logical answer is that their previous promises of doing things differently are bullshit.

3.15.2016

Today's Super Tuesday #3 primary vote is poised to be the most important to date. The gulf between the two major parties is galactic in size on most issues, but one - free trade - stands out as something both sides agree on. As yesterday's excellent article 'What’s The Problem With Free Trade' explains "There are those who say any increase in trade is good. But if you close a factory here and lay off the workers, open the factory “there” to make the same things the factory here used to make, bring those things into the country to sell in the same outlets, you have just 'increased trade' because now those goods cross a border. Supporters of free trade are having a harder and harder time convincing American workers this is good for them."

As i see it the free trade scam is the lid on the pot that's creating the steam we're seeing explode in America. Both the Sanders and Trump arguments in this area are nearly identical yet the pressure created isn't creating the working class unity that it should because the elites have the levers of power [media, debt, monetary policy, police state control and religion etc]] and use those levers to pander to fear as well as mis-inform the citizens. Meanwhile the pressure builds and the victims - all of us non-elites - swirl and bubble...it's a classic case of divide and conquer and it's working. The people wanting to lash out at the Trump rallies [and everywhere else] are all victims lashing out at other victims who are in reality just like them [with perhaps slightly different pigmentation, biology or religious belief etc].

Bernie Sanders continues to gain momentum with his economic populism arguments. Last week just before Sanders' Michigan upset Dan Cantor, national director of the Working Families Party, said when announcing they endorsed Sanders: “The Beltway elite may never have really understood why job-killing trade deals are such a big deal. “But the people of Michigan surely do, and Bernie Sanders does too.”

Yesterday, on the eve of the all important Ohio vote, Amalgamated Transit Union International President Larry Hanley said in making the announcement that the ATU officially endorsed Sanders for president and putting this year's presidential election in historic context, "This is no ordinary time in U.S. history and our nation is crying out for a leader who owes nothing to the corporate interests responsible for undermining the American middle class. Our executive board recognizes what’s at stake in this election and have made the bold decision of endorsing Bernie Sanders for President. Bernie is right for working people and right for America."

Hopefully the Sanders' message of economic populism that transcended demographics in Michigan will carry the day in Ohio, illinois and Missouri as well. Hillary Clinton has built up a 200-ish lead in elected delegates over the last two weeks but she mostly is only winning and getting her delegates from the southern states, which the Democrats won’t win in a general election. i think that is really troubling because in Nov. it's the swing states, where Sanders shines, that will decide who wins the White House.

The fact that the message - Free Trade is a globalized corporate weapon, whereas, Fair Trade is the people's and planet's defense against the elites - is the common rallying cry of both the Republican and Democratic hopefuls proves to me that it transcends politics and is part of the greater class war, a real war that transcends the artificial divisions, be they, race, gender, religious beliefs, geography etc. that are used by the elites to make people blind to that reality.

3.13.2016

Baseline emissions from the EIA carbon tax/consumption model (in blue) are expected to decline by a fairly impressive 25 percent between 2015 and 2040, presumably because of some combination of less driving and more efficient vehicles (driven in part by tough new fuel economy standards). But the extra impact from adding in a carbon tax (in purple) is essentially zero.

If there’s one thing that economists agree on about carbon taxes it’s that there’s not much effect on consumption of transportation fuels. The explanation is that demand is very inelastic - driving is something that people 'have to do'. So price changes don’t have much impact on how much driving people do. For example, the NEMS model used by the Energy Information Administration predicts the impact on gasoline consumption of a carbon tax that starts at $25 per ton CO2 in 2015 and rises at 5 percent per year through 2040 should reduce consumption by something like 0.034 percent, a negligible amount.

At first glance this negligible effect seems to contradict the fact that greenhouse gas emissions [GHGs] from British Columbia had fallen 4.5% between 2007 and 2010 following imposition of its carbon tax. However, it is estimated by experts and the BC govt. that most of this decrease is, in fact, attributable to the economic recession. Rob Fleming, the B.C. NDP environment critic, said Mr. Lake’s confession was a bit odd. “The minister was candid, but basically admitting global, economic recessionary forces had more to do with B.C’s slight emissions drop than the sum total of the B.C. Liberal climate policy.”

Considering that transportation accounts for about 1/4 of national greenhouse gas emissions and about 1/8 of global greenhouse gas emissions. The global climate challenge is mostly about coal and electricity generation, not about petroleum or transportation fuels. Yet BC's carbon tax [CT] is regressive in both sectors because a carbon tax applied to industrial producers is simply added to the cost side of the ledger and passed on in the price, so the tax ends up being paid by the end of the line consumer in all cases. And though it may be paid equally [relative to consumption] the pain isn't equal, the rich wouldn't even notice, but the poor would have to adjust their other spending to accommodate the increase.

As The Mud Report detailed a few days ago, the regressive nature of a carbon tax can be reversed depending on how the revenues from it are recycled back into the economy. BC brags that revenues from it's CT are 'neutral' but as the image above shows most of $5 billion in extra carbon tax revenues go to reducing corporate taxes and doesn't fund public transit at all, nor does it provide financial incentives to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles, make your home more energy efficient or fund other environmental projects. BC's CT, though loudly praised, simply takes money from the poor people who cause the least carbon pollution due to the lowest consumption and transfers it to the corporations and shareholders who not only need it the least but also create the largest per capita portion of the GHG problem.

To add insult to injury, Christy Clark's Liberals have declared natural gas to be clean energy source [despite the fugitive methane it refuses to acknowledge, let alone measure] and if Clark’s ambitions of five LNG export terminals come on stream in that province, the oil and gas sector will rise to 52 per cent of Canada’s emissions by 2030 meaning the rest of the Canada's economy will have to reduce emissions by 54 per cent.

To summarize, carbon taxes create negligible GHG savings, they are paid mostly by the poor, the revenue from the tax goes mostly to the rich and, as the graph above shows they are meaningless. But as all the graphs, economists and even the BC govt agrees an economic downturn does have a positive effect on GHG emissions.

Though our leaders and media constantly drum GROWTH, GROWTH, GROWTH, the fact is that when human consumption slows, planet Earth can heal. Only when our obsession with consumption wanes, only when our economy - based on endless growth - is seen as the destroyer of life and real wealth that it is, will our planet be able to heal. Two interesting points in the graph below: 1.) The reduction in 2015's emissions may be partly due to better efficiency, renewable energy, and the like. But, mainly, it is the result of the global economic slowdown. 2.) Every time global emissions drop it's a result of an economic slowdown.

To conclude, CTs are designed to make politicians look good not cut GHG emissions by any meaningful amount. CTs can be progressive, but can also be regressive, as is BC's version. But there is an effective mechanism for reducing GHG emissions - degrowth.

3.07.2016

Bernie had a big weekend with convincing victories in Kansas and Nebraska [lets's hear it for the prairie populists] and Maine. Yet at the end of it he had fallen further behind in elected delegates. Then last night Bernie again stole the show at the debate in Flint Michigan where both his unwavering class consciousness arguments and environmental stances, especially on fracking, drew huge cheers from the audience. Both these issues should put Bernie in a great position in tomorrow's Michigan vote, but apparently unless there's a miracle Hilary will win there by a wide margin. i just can't understand why.

No state has lost more well paid jobs to free trade and no state has been plundered worse than Michigan by America's corporate vampire friendly free trade policies of the last few decades. Policies that Hillary supported [until flip-flopping recently] and Bernie always denounced. No state has more first hand experience with the causes and effects of the 99% vs. 1% than Michigan, it's hard to believe that Sanders pledge to reverse a status-quo of wealth distribution from the bottom to the top, responsible for entrenching gross inequality and social and economic injustice hasn't propelled him to the top.

"Sanders is educating the American people on the importance of class rather than race, religion, gender or sexual orientation when it comes to understanding the state of the nation. The only divide that matters in society, he has spares no opportunity in pronouncing, is the one that exists between the super-rich and everybody else." - RT

According to the pundits and the polls Bernie is losing the African-American vote very badly, and again, i can't understand why. It seems to me that Bernie's decades long equality message and his record as a civil rights campaigner both in and out of government should be a beacon to African-American voters, but it isn't.

Just over a week ago US Rep. Tulsi Gabbard who was the DNC Vice-Chair resigned and threw her support behind Bernie saying: "There is a clear contrast between our two candidates with regard to my strong belief that we must end the interventionist, regime change policies that have cost us so much," she wrote. "This is not just another 'issue.' This is THE issue, and it’s deeply personal to me. This is why I’ve decided to resign as Vice Chair of the DNC so that I can support Bernie Sanders in his efforts to earn the Democratic nomination in the 2016 presidential race."

i'd have thought that an announcement like this and the Vermont senator's past support for drastic military cuts plus the fact that in 1995 Bernie introduced a bill to terminate America’s nuclear weapons program and as late as 2002, he supported a 50 percent cut for the Pentagon saying "corrupt defense contractors are to blame for massive fraud and a “bloated military budget", would sway Bernie's progressive foreign policy critics...but no, they haven't [read why here, here, here and here].

It's all a mystery to me, but the fact remains that for Bernie to have any chance of turning his heartfelt words into reality he'd need to have very long 'coattails' to change the numbers in congress considering that the House is now dominated by the neanderthal Republicans and the Senate, though perhaps able to achieve a Democratic majority in Nov., is presently Republican controlled too.. Consequently, without a Democratic landslide neither Hillary's modest changes or Bernie's revolutionary ones can go anywhere.

Unfortunately, despite huge turnouts for his rallies, especially by young voters, those huge landslide type numbers just aren't showing up at the polls. The primary numbers show that overwhelmingly the Republican carnival is drawing the huge numbers not Bernie's class war arguments. i guess John Steinbeck put it best when he said, "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

We'll see, as another great philosopher - Yogi Berra - said, "it ain't over 'til it's over" so i'll cling to my hopes for that miracle to appear. But if it doesn't, i'm more and more thinking, especially as the deluded evangelical Ted Cruz is Trump's only real opposition, that i'd rather see the loose cannon, the buffoon, that is the Donald as president than Hillary because he just might be the bowling ball the Empire needs whereas Hillary is just more of the same.

3.06.2016

The Trudeau government here in Canada is doing it's best to call what is a regressive Carbon Tax 'carbon pricing' and is clearly convinced that it is the only politically acceptable solution to meeting Canada's carbon budget promises. The fact is that carbon pollution, like all forms of pollution, is a byproduct of industrial production. These ugly byproducts remain unaccounted for in capitalist accounting of the costs of production. Instead, they are externalized onto future generations who'll be on the hook for the inevitable cleanup costs and onto the entire biosphere.

Next fact, the poor live with the various regressive taxation schemes [sales or VAT taxes, MSP fees here in BC and carbon taxes] because they don't have the extra funds it takes to adequately bribe enough politicians to get progressive taxes mandated. The rich are well educated in the cost-benefit analysis of paying off the every political party in every 'democracy' to keep their position secure.The poor spend their time in prayer and at the lottery ticket window.

Trudeau and his government are far from unique. Like all politicians they understand that no one ever won an election by telling voters that: 'due to the laws of physics, they'll have to consume less'. As i'm told all the time: "less doesn't sell". So the flimflam of carbon taxes have become the answer de jour. Carbon taxes make the politicians look good, by taking from the poor and giving to the rich. How?

For instance, when we Canadian drivers fill up our gas tanks, 35% of the price we now pay is tax. If the average tank holds 64 litres, every time we gas up at $1 a litre, we’re handing over $22 not to the producers and distributors of this product, but to the government. Since poor people have less money overall, taking $22 from them at the pump is a big deal. Via gasoline taxes, the poor are forced to pay a higher share of their income just to do ordinary things such as get to work, drop their kids at daycare, fetch groceries, and visit ailing relatives. This is called regressive taxation. When the $22 in tax we pay every time we gas up becomes $25 or $30, more affluent families will absorb the increase. They won’t be happy, but it won’t diminish their horizons. - Donna Laframboise

It’s poor people, the ones already pinching their pennies, whose lives will be made more miserable. Since driving to work isn’t negotiable, there will be less money in these households for food, clothes, eyeglasses, dentists, and skating lessons for the kids. There will be fewer family vacations, and narrower prospects. As the end of the month approaches and the bills loom large, stress and conflict will be amplified. The promise of a tax credit does nothing to alleviate a poor family's immediate and necessary needs. Try heating your house with a tax credit. Try telling your kids they can't go on a school trip next week but next year the family will get a tax credit.

Carbon taxes cause real misery here and now and they don't work to boot. Politicians see carbon taxes as a way to look good without biting the rich hands that feed them. Due to the global nature of our economies and the fact that much of Canada's non-necessity consumption is imported without a global agreement on an effective and equal carbon tax [as in James Hanson's plan, see video below] all the misery that the poor would suffer is meaningless and unless the revenues generated by a large enough carbon tax to make a real difference is redistributed progressively [exactly the opposite of what BC does] the results would be even worse for the poor because much of the revenue generated by carbon taxes goes to cutting taxes that are progressive - like income and corporate taxes.

In addition corporate taxes are costs that get passed onto the consumers eventually so the poor pay again. The point of carbon taxation is to cut greenhouse gas consumption, exactly what BC's carbon tax has failed miserably at. The BC government brags that the carbon tax has resulted in lower consumption since it's introduction in 2008, but consumption of everything plummeted in 2008 just after the crooked banking collapse that year and as the rich are far less inconvenienced by downturns it would have been the poor who bought less heating and transportation fuel as well as everything else that contributed to the improved numbers. So the rich consume the most GHG causing stuff and get the most benefit from the carbon taxes.

Because BC is the only jurisdiction that currently has a carbon tax it's being lauded as a great example. But is it? If the BC government, and the Canadian govt. eventually, used the revenues generated by carbon taxation from those who use carbon-producing products and plunked it into initiatives that promote using less (transit, alternative energy, water conservation, marshland and grassland restoration, environmental education, organic agriculture, etc.) it could have been. If it had used the revenues to mitigate the misery it causes to the poor instead of a way to replace revenue from progressive taxation, it could have been...but it does neither.

Carbon taxes could be a valuable tool in the battle against carbon and other pollution caused by industrial development IF it was globally implemented as Hansen explains. Carbon taxes can be a useful tool, IF they are part of a concrete action to phase out fossil fuels rapidly and provide alternatives while being socially just. Unfortunately, pro-business governments, including all governments in Canada, aren’t going to do that.

The fact is, there's plenty of everything for everybody to live IF resources were distributed justly and used wisely. But that's not what our economic or political paradigm creates. Instead we have a few humans with far to much and many with far to little. Though our leaders and media constantly drum GROWTH, GROWTH, GROWTH, the fact is that when human consumption slows, planet Earth can heal. Only when our obsession with materialism wanes, only when our economy - based on endless growth - is seen as the destroyer of life and real wealth that it is, will our planet be able to heal.

3.04.2016

The amount and speed of change necessary globally to bend the curve downward enough to be meaningful means that massive, immediate change is required. Canada's PM Justin Trudeau and Environment Minister McKenna both stood up at COP 21 in Paris a few months ago and acknowledged that they understood the numbers.

To meet Canada's short-term target of lowering emissions by 17% below 2005 levels by 2020 would require shutting down the equivalent of 58% of Canada’s oil and gas sector in five years. Meeting Canada's 2030 target of 30% below 2005 levels, would require shuting down the equivalent of all of Canada’s oil and gas sector in 15 years and still come up short.

Instead, after two days of meetings, Trudeau presents 'The Vancouver Declaration', a "plan to make a plan" 8 months from now. Trudeau had threatened to impose a small national carbon tax, but, a bit sheepishly. agreed to let each jurisdiction figure out their own approach. Quebec and Ontario are already committed Cap and Trade - basically a lisence to pollute. B.C. has a carbon tax but all proceeds go to cutting other taxes - taxes like income and profit, that are progressive. The carbon tax in Alberta is at least trying to redistribute the revenue progressively except they are exempting the worst offenders - the fossil fuel industry.

The problem is that every politician knows that 'less' doesn't sell, so Trudeau is searching for a way to meet Canada's climate commitments while saying he can grow the economy...BUT...first Trudeau says Canada needs to build more pipelines to transport tar sands crud are necessary to fund Canada's transition to a green future...{puke]...But, as Barry Saxifrage explained recently, Canada's fossil fuel industry's current slowdown, let alone the whole future of dirty fuels, means no more mega-pipelines need to be built. Barry says: "Canada's pipeline wars may be ending sooner -- and with less national division and trauma -- than expected."

There are strategies that might actually work to reduce climate change and the wider pollution threats but they can't currently be implemented because they are politically radioactive. A good sized shrinking of the economy would almost certainly help not only to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but also our consumption of resources, leaving more for future generations. But what politician would advocate such policies? Only one who was determined not to be re-elected.

So Canada's best and brightest elected to 'kick the can down the road' rather than even approach the subject of wanting and consuming less. Democracy and Necessity of Action are at a crossroads, as Kevin Anderson says, "In true Orwellian style, the political and economic dogma that has come to pervade all facets of society must not be questioned. For many years, green-growth oratory has quashed any voice with the audacity to suggest that the carbon budgets associated with 2 °C cannot be reconciled with the mantra of economic growth."

The unavoidable truth is our governments are captured by the corporate polluters and the citizenry is addicted to the trinkets the corporations sell. The addicted will agree with any bullshit story that feeds their habit. 'The Vancouver Declaration' is an admission that economic growth and carbon reductions make strange bedfellows

2.21.2016

As of today events along the Turkish/Syrian border region continue to slowly cool down. Turkey continues to shell the Kurdish positions near Azaz but with less intensity. The Saudis, like the Turks, aren't talking about imminent invasion, at least for now. The Americans and Russians too appear to have recognized the fear of being on the 'eve of destruction' as a great motivator.

As the complex events continue to unfold today the best thing we can do is to look back the long history that the current conflict is a part of. What better place to start than Aleppo, where nearly 5,000 years ago a shrine was built on a hill to to a storm god, Hadda. The hill that would over 2,000 years later be fortified by the governor Alexander the Great left to rule the area after he conquered the region. The hill that today is the central prize that the Al-Nusra Front [Al-Qaeda in Syria] is holding [barely] against the combined armed forces of Syria, the Iranian militias, Hezbollah, the Syrian Kurds and the Russian Air Force.

Thousands of pages have been written by historians, religionists and a wide range of scholars trying to fully explain the history of this beautiful land and peoples of the Middle East. What follows is a reading list of sorts. In it the writer of these lines will try to touch on a couple of the major events but also to suggest articles and books that look at the historic issues and events from a range of perspectives.

At the time of Muhammad's birth around 570 CE the Middle East was politically and militarily divided between the The Byzantine and Persian Empires who were constantly at war and the small but fierce nomadic Arab tribes who's never ending feuds and harsh terrain had forced some of them to head north into the area between the two major Empires of the region. Later this would prove to be the region where the Arabs would first expand into and conquer both empires from because there already were Arabs there and because the two large warring empires had spent all their wealth and energy fighting each other.

Muhammad was a simple man who's prophetic visions served as a catalyst to unite some of the powerful Arab's family clans around Medina and Mecca in a greater cause - Islam. The study of Early Islam is as interesting as it is confounded by those early Muslims who were contemporaries of Muhammad and who succeeded him. Almost immediately after Muhammad's death in 632 his successors launched the Arab Islamic armies in the creation of one of the world's great empires stretching from the Great Wall of China to Timbuktu, France and India.

As with every empire, the internecine battles erupted not long after the conquests began. Our modern understanding of major events of that era is clouded by the different versions of those events as passed on by the various divided factions, divisions that still exist, divisions that are still playing out in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and beyond. For instance, Wikipedia's History of Islam and Desmond Stewart's Early Islam agree on the major events but differ on some of the most important details of the split between the Sunni and Shia. The Wiki version being that Husayn ibn Ali, by then Muhammad's only living grandson, died in battle in the ensuing war that transpired after he refused to swear allegiance to the Umayyads' Caliphate. Stewart's version, the one most scholars accept, says he was murdered by the Damascus centered governor Muawiyah I's followers.

This is the origin Sunni/Shia division and of course both sides believe different versions. On top of that, and maybe even more important to today's events, after li ibn Abu Talib, the existing Caliph, agreed to arbitration instead of endless war with Muawiyah I for overall leadership, another group - the Khawaij later to become the Whabbists and Salafists - refused to accept any agreement because they were convinced only 'God' could choose and that the only way 'God' could be allowed to choose was to let all out war.determine who was the winner. [So these guys were fanatics from day 1].

The Kharijites developed extreme doctrines that set them apart from both mainstream Sunni and Shia Muslims. This branch of Islam founded by the Kharijites, known today as Wahhabism and/or Salafism, became the misguided expression of one man’s political ambition - Mohammed Abdel-Wahhab, a bigot who was recruited by the British Empire to erode the fabric of Islam and crack the armor of the then-Ottoman Empire by breeding sectarianism and dissent. It is Abdel-Wahhab's alliance to the House of Saud that ultimately unleashed this now seemingly unstoppable evil we know today under the tag of Islamic radicalism.

Of course much has happened during the 1,400 odd years between the Sunni/Shia/Kharijite division and now that brought today's major Empires nose to nose [nuke to nuke] in the area around Aleppo. Most of those events are well researched and much less subject to conflicts of interpretation caused the existing oral tradition of communication that existed among the Arab peoples at the time.

La Via Campesina is the international movement which brings together millions of peasants, small and medium-size farmers, landless people, women farmers, indigenous people, migrants and agricultural workers from around the world. It defends small-scale sustainable agriculture as a way to promote social justice and dignity. It strongly opposes corporate driven agriculture and transnational companies that are destroying people and nature.

Sitting Up Mud

"Bokonon made mud. Bokonon said to some of the mud, "Sit up!" "See all I've made, the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars."

And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around. Lucky me, lucky mud. I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job Bokonon had done.

"Nice going, Bokonon. Nobody but you could have done it, I certainly couldn't have. I feel very unimportant compared to You. The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and look around. I got so much, and most mud got so little. Thank you for the honor!"

Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep. What memories for mud to have! "What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met! I loved everything I saw! Good night. Amen."

Quotes

"Our dreams draw us foward, as water whispers to the dowser's wand."- Tony Cohan

"Religion is not merely the opium of the masses, it's the cyanide." - Tom Robbins

"Politics is how you live your life, not who you vote for!" -Jerry Rubin

"The pencil is mightier than the pen"- Robert Pirsig

"Resist much, obey little." -Walt Whitman

When the axe came into the woods, many of the trees said, “At least the handle is one of us.” — Turkish proverb

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction" - Pascal

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair

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Flying Spagetti Monster Church

The single greatest service each of us can provide to our planet, our families and ourselves is to grow our own organic food from heritage seeds. Then to save our own seed in turn, and in so doing be part of the future solution to the present day destruction being sown by GMO's, agri-business and the bio-technology giants. - Bob Wiley